Introduction to Thomas Hobbes
Aim of the course:
Consideration of some thinkers from 1650 to 1890. For example, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc. This
period marks the rise and triumph of modern political person and modern states. Each seminars focus on passages
that are considered important.
The selection of thinkers are related to specific political themes. Main themes include…
• the relation of authority and community,
• the formation of political myth, the rise and belief of the efficacy of human action,
● the gradual emergence of individual thought capable of being under their own political control.
Breughel - Fall of Icarus
• 1558
• Icarus was the son of Daedalus who bought the labyrinth
• Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed
from feathers and wax. Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too
low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his
father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell
into the sea where he drowned.
• This is the start of a period where people make their own way
Fall of Icarus Poem - Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
● This is the new world onto which Hobbes appears
Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679
Summary of Leviathan:
, He sets himself to find a form of political organisation that provides answers to all of human questions and is
authoritative, yet does not rest on anything other than human activity and intelligence. Nature is confusing, God is not
all good and tradition no longer sufficed.
Why? (Context)
1. The Renaissance
2. Reformation & Conscience
1. Science and he power of knowledge to control the world
The Renaissance
The state was thought as a work of art by humans for human purposes
If your conscience tells you to do something that is the final rule, then you don’t need religion or a pope for moral
decisions - this led to political actions being based on conscience (this must be educated)
1559 founded the first school of Calvin to educate the conscience. To read the scriptures and to interpret them
rationally,
Growth of Science
The nation of science is the notion of power, if you know why things happen you have control over them.
Summary - Continued
This all leads to skepticism about external authority
The growth of science means that what can be done is in our power
- Very important for future of political thought: no longer copying preexisting model but MAKING
Two other important developments:
4. The idea of office (distinction of the natural person and thew role) - comes form christianity/priests
5. From economic realm the related concept of the persona ficta (i.e. the artificial person)
Hobbes starts writing from 1620, one of his first political texts are De Cive (1642).
De Cive:
• Religion
• Nature
● Civilisation
● Context: King Charles I
Leviathan
• 1651
• One of his major works
• The Leviathan is in the horizon watching over the city - There is no power over the earth that
compares to him (John 41:24)
What is behind the curtain?
The art of the Coven (derived from the Bible)
On the bottom half you have the equivalence of powers
- Castle, locus, church
- Crown, symbol, mitre
Aim of the course:
Consideration of some thinkers from 1650 to 1890. For example, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc. This
period marks the rise and triumph of modern political person and modern states. Each seminars focus on passages
that are considered important.
The selection of thinkers are related to specific political themes. Main themes include…
• the relation of authority and community,
• the formation of political myth, the rise and belief of the efficacy of human action,
● the gradual emergence of individual thought capable of being under their own political control.
Breughel - Fall of Icarus
• 1558
• Icarus was the son of Daedalus who bought the labyrinth
• Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed
from feathers and wax. Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too
low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his
father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell
into the sea where he drowned.
• This is the start of a period where people make their own way
Fall of Icarus Poem - Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
● This is the new world onto which Hobbes appears
Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679
Summary of Leviathan:
, He sets himself to find a form of political organisation that provides answers to all of human questions and is
authoritative, yet does not rest on anything other than human activity and intelligence. Nature is confusing, God is not
all good and tradition no longer sufficed.
Why? (Context)
1. The Renaissance
2. Reformation & Conscience
1. Science and he power of knowledge to control the world
The Renaissance
The state was thought as a work of art by humans for human purposes
If your conscience tells you to do something that is the final rule, then you don’t need religion or a pope for moral
decisions - this led to political actions being based on conscience (this must be educated)
1559 founded the first school of Calvin to educate the conscience. To read the scriptures and to interpret them
rationally,
Growth of Science
The nation of science is the notion of power, if you know why things happen you have control over them.
Summary - Continued
This all leads to skepticism about external authority
The growth of science means that what can be done is in our power
- Very important for future of political thought: no longer copying preexisting model but MAKING
Two other important developments:
4. The idea of office (distinction of the natural person and thew role) - comes form christianity/priests
5. From economic realm the related concept of the persona ficta (i.e. the artificial person)
Hobbes starts writing from 1620, one of his first political texts are De Cive (1642).
De Cive:
• Religion
• Nature
● Civilisation
● Context: King Charles I
Leviathan
• 1651
• One of his major works
• The Leviathan is in the horizon watching over the city - There is no power over the earth that
compares to him (John 41:24)
What is behind the curtain?
The art of the Coven (derived from the Bible)
On the bottom half you have the equivalence of powers
- Castle, locus, church
- Crown, symbol, mitre
